


The Last Minute Job (Never Works Out)

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Assassination Plot(s), Episode: s05e09 The Rundown Job, Frenemies, Gen, Mercenaries, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Eliot turns down Riley's assignment in The Rundown Job, it falls to an old "friend" to fill the contract.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Minute Job (Never Works Out)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theron09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theron09/gifts).



> Every year without fail, somebody posts a prompt that makes my eyes light up and makes my brain scream "I HAVE TO WRITE THAT!"
> 
> This year it was the idea of Quinn being the shooter in The Rundown Job. Because...yes!
> 
> I hope you enjoy it Theron09 - thanks as always for playing with us!

It wasn’t that the job had suddenly hopped the express train south. Jobs had turned on Quinn before – you didn’t survive in this kind of game as long as he had without racking up a few failures. If you were lucky, you walked away from your failures with your skin relatively whole and nobody tailing you, looking to put you in the ground for good.

If you were Quinn, you ended up trying to stow a Tango 51 with shaking hands, while Eliot freaking Spencer closed in on your position, looking for your head.

 _Shitshitshitshitshit…_ Jerking the zipper closed on his carry-bag, Quinn risked another look over the parapet wall, just in time to see Eliot disappear into the building. _Okay, now what?_ Openly panicked, he scanned the rooftop for an opening – anything that could possibly take him out of the other hitter’s path and keep him in one piece and breathing for a little while longer.

Memory of the building plans he’d had on his prep drive came to mind just as he was entertaining a completely ridiculous impulse to leap to the closest adjacent roof and try and escape that way. _Two access points to the roof,_ he remembered, focusing on the elevation plan. The stairs he’d used to reach the roof were on his right, which meant the other tower was…

Gravel scraped under his boots as he pivoted towards the south end of the roof. _There._ The access was hidden behind a weird architectural detail that as far as Quinn could tell served no useful purpose.

Now he just needed his luck to hold out long enough for Eliot to pick the _other_ stair tower.

No sound of running feet greeted him as Quinn opened the access door, but every survival instinct he had was on point as he started down the stairs. Eliot on his own was challenge enough, but he was sure he’d seen a flash of Parker’s bright hair through the colored smoke that had suddenly obscured his field of vision. And where Parker was, a certain genius hacker would definitely not be far away.

 _Hell,_ he realized, taking the steps as fast as he dared, _for all I know they’ve already figured out I was the shooter._ It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

Why had he agreed to this job again? Last minute assignments; they never went well, no matter how good the broker’s reputation was (and Riley was one of the best). It had never even occurred to him the Leverage team might be in the area – last he’d heard, they were on the other end of the country.

 _Calm…_ he thought, reaching the ground floor without incident. _Nothing to see here, folks. Certainly not a twitchy assassin with a sniper rifle._ The noise and light that assailed Quinn as he opened the fire door was almost physically painful. Waiting a beat for his vision to settle, he shifted the carry bag to a more comfortable position on his shoulder and headed down the sidewalk at an easy pace.  
***********************************  
“Dammit!” It took Eliot less than a minute to confirm he’d been outmaneuvered.

 _”Nothing, huh?”_ Frustration melted into a fierce grin as the hitter recognized the tone in his teammate’s self-satisfied drawl.

“Hardison man,” he said, going to the parapet wall and leaning over far enough to scan the street below, “tell me you got him.”

 _”Coming out the south entrance,”_ the hacker confirmed. _”Heading east.”_ Eliot moved quickly towards the south wall, picking up his quarry rounding the corner. 

_”What do you want to do?”_ Parker asked as Eliot ran through his options, not liking the results his brain was coming up with one little bit. _”Hardison’s tracking him on traffic cameras – do we go after him?”_

“How’s the target?” Eliot asked by way of response. He had enough of the puzzle now to understand his first instincts were right. Riley was brokering something big and horrible, and every step the three of them took from this point forward was going to carry heavier consequences than any of them had signed on for.

 _”Remarkably calm, all things considered,”_ Hardison reported.

Perversely, the news didn’t make Eliot feel any better. _Sniper isn’t gonna get paid until the job is done._ “I’m coming to you,” he said, making up his mind in the next breath.

 _”We’re not going to chase the shooter”_ Parker asked, and Eliot couldn’t keep from grinning at the almost childish whine in her voice.

“We’re not,” he confirmed, starting for the stairwell. “This guy isn’t going to get paid until the job’s done, which means he’s probably going to circle back and make another try for it.” He started down the stairs at double-time, thoughts racing, filing everything they knew into the proper order in his mind.

By the time he reached the street, his sense of dread had grown so thick that Eliot was seriously considering putting Parker and Hardison on a plane and sending them to higher ground. _If it smells like a terrorist and looks like a terrorist…_

Sirens were filling the air by the time he reached where Hardison and Parker were holed up with the sniper’s target. The hacker looked up at him, clearly on edge. “We’ve got to go.”

Eliot shook his head, taking in the young woman who they’d rescued from certain death only minutes earlier. She _was_ calm, much too calm for someone who’d just been snatched from her destiny as a lead story on the six o’clock news. “Teresa, what do you do for a living?”

His heart sank as the young woman met his gaze and said, “I’m an administrator.”

“For what?” he prompted, hand already reaching for his phone. He had to get Parker and Hardison out of here, if it wasn’t already too late.

“The 911 emergency system for the city of Washington DC. I run it.”

Eliot was already dialing.  
***********************************  
Dark eyes glared at Quinn over a makeshift gag. He’d used the patrolman’s own handcuffs to secure him after forcing the young man to strip out of his uniform at gun point. “Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped, settling the officer’s cap in place. “You’d rather I put a bullet in you, we can still go that route.”

He wouldn’t shoot the kid, of course. It was a point of pride for Quinn that he’d reached a level in his career where collateral damage wasn’t a foregone conclusion. He’d always found a well-timed threat to be more effective than a well-placed bullet.

The plaza was a sea of uniforms and suits by the time Quinn stepped out of his hiding place. The trick was going to be to move with absolute confidence – Eliot wasn’t going to hold onto the target any longer than he had to. Quinn was willing to bet that the other hitter already had Hardison working every angle to piece together whatever terrorist event Teresa Darnell’s assassination was supposed to be a part of. That meant that his target was likely already moving through this sea of alphabet soup. All Quinn had to do was determine the easiest point of interception.

 _Medical,_ he decided, spotting a trio of ambulances at the far side of the plaza. The trio’s rescue had been pulled off on the fly. Quinn didn’t know how they’d generated the smoke they’d used for cover, not to mention how fast Eliot had been moving to get the target out of the line of fire. It was as good a place to start looking as any.

The second ambulance, nestled tightly in between its fellows, yielded success. Teresa Darnell was seated on the edge of the rear opening, one arm tethered by a blood pressure cuff, and two uniformed EMTs peppering her with questions.

Quinn sidled up to one of the watching uniform officers. “They going to transport her?” he asked, pitching his voice low.

The man shrugged. “She keeps sayin’ she’s not hurt. Command’s gonna want to talk to her regardless.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Quinn said. “The bigs are getting twitchy. Whatever this was, they want to know what she knows sooner rather than later.”

The actual police officer stepped back, gesturing Quinn forward. Taking the invitation with a quick nod, Quinn approached the EMTs.

Two minutes later, he had his target by the arm, and was heading back into the crowd. “I need to check in with my office,” Teresa said as they threaded their way around clusters of police and other agencies. “False or incomplete reports are only going to heighten the panic.”

“I have my orders,” Quinn said, trying not to tighten his grip reflexively. They were coming up on a mobile command center. It was big enough to provide reasonable cover for Quinn to divert his prize away from the crowds and complete his contract.

Two extremely bored looking officers were standing next to the vehicle. “We’re almost there,” Quinn said, pitching his voice low enough not to draw attention. Nodding at each of the uniforms in turn, he quickened his step slightly – suddenly anxious to be clear of this mess with his pay cycling securely into his account.

“Jiminy clicks! Oh, cheese biscuits! Are you ser... you’ve got to move this truck right now! It can’t be parked here. Move it right now!” Quinn almost stumbled, hearing Alec Hardison’s familiar voice behind them, edged with a teeth-grating, nasal whine.

“You have to move away from the vehicle!”

 _Get to the other end of the truck…get to the other end, then cut over and we’re home free._ Quinn’s heart was pounding in his chest now; it was all he could do not to break into a run, especially when he heard the next voice speak.

“This is his truck. He built this $20 million thing. Dr. Macallister. I’m his handler.”

Eliot.

 _Walk…walk…walk…_ Quinn only realized he’d tightened his grip on Teresa when she made a small noise of protest, but by then they were close enough that he was able to hustle her around the front of the truck and out of Eliot and Hardison’s line of sight.

He had a split second to register blue eyes and flowing blond hair before his world lit up white around him and his muscles locked into painful rigidity. “That’s not yours,” Quinn heard Parker growl as he lost consciousness.  
**********************************  
“Please explain to me why we aren’t turning his ass over to your scary paramilitary friend?”

Eliot pressed his palms to his temples, forcing himself to swallow his frustration instead of unleashing it on the two people who arguably least deserved it. _Fucking Quinn._ “Wake up!” he snapped, prodding the unconscious man with the toe of one boot. “Quinn!”

He didn’t know whether it made him feel better or worse that Riley had hired Quinn to replace him. If he had to be outmaneuvered by anyone, Jonah Quinn was somebody he could legitimately accept. On the other hand, every time he found himself on opposite sides from the handsome hitter it became harder to commit to what inevitably had to be done.

“Next time I have to ask, I swear to God you’re going to lose a kidney,” Eliot growled, seeing the muscles of Quinn’s arms flex imperceptibly – testing the zip ties that bound his wrists.

“I keep forgetting you ex-military types don’t know the difference between asking and ordering,” Quinn drawled, his pale eyes opening at last to fix on Eliot. “Can I assume that since you haven’t answered Hardison yet, that my circumstances are open to negotiation?”

Eliot went down on his haunches, letting the other man see how deadly serious he was. “You have two minutes to convince me that you didn’t know Riley was sucking you into a terrorist plot. Do that, and then we’ll see about renegotiating your circumstances.”

If Quinn had flat out denied any knowledge of what he’d become a part of, Eliot wouldn’t have believed him. The idea that his fellow hitter would have been too distracted by the fee attached to the job to want to look too deeply into it rang with far more truth.

Quinn finding himself in over his head and scrambling to salvage whatever he could from the day - _that_ was the man in his softer moments Eliot considered a friend. Pulling his pocket knife out, he opened the largest blade. “What are you, the world’s oldest Boy Scout?” Quinn snarked, raising his hands and spreading his wrists as far as the plastic ties would allow.

“I’ll have you know I was an Eagle Scout,” Eliot countered, positioning the blade and pulling sharply forward. The plastic parted with a faint snap.

“This surprises me not at all,” Quinn said, rotating his wrists and chafing at them. “You haven’t said where we’re going from here.”

“Straight into the military’s arms, if there’s any justice,” Hardison grumbled.

Eliot pushed to his feet, extending a hand. “You’re going to help us save the city,” he told Quinn. The other hitter gripped it, and together they got Quinn standing.

“I don’t suppose there’s any money in it?” Quinn asked.

Eliot shook his head. “This time you’re going to do the right thing _because_ it’s the right thing. No other reason.” Stepping back, he shifted to bring Parker and Hardison into his field of view. Parker clearly supported his decision. Hardison was less enthusiastic, but Eliot knew the fact that he’d done no serious arguing on the matter spoke volumes.

Quinn looked to each of them in turn before bringing his focus back to Eliot. “What do you need me to do first?”


End file.
